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The Fall of Six Prime Ministers and the Fortress of Indian Power

Britain is about to welcome its seventh prime minister in a decade. Keir Starmer, who swept to power with a landslide just two years ago, has resigned. His approval rating plunged to a catastrophic minus 45 per cent, and his own party has forced him out. Before him came Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson, Theresa May, and David Cameron — a cascade of prime ministerial downfalls that tells us less about individual failure and far more about the machinery of accountability. For anyone in India who has forgotten the name or face of a single one of these former PMs, rest assured, the fault is not yours. The revolving door at 10 Downing Street has spun so fast that it has blurred into a spectacle. Yet within that spectacle lies a brutal democratic logic — one that stands in chilling contrast to the political culture we have normalised under the present government in New Delhi.

The Brexit Dominoes: A Quick Tour of a Decade of Collapses

The trail of departures began with the 2016 referendum. David Cameron staked his premiership on remaining in the European Union, lost, and resigned immediately. Theresa May succeeded him, Britain’s second female prime minister, but could not get her Brexit deal through parliament despite three attempts. Her cabinet ministers mutinied, the government collapsed, and Boris Johnson rode the chaos into power on a promise to “get Brexit done.”

Johnson did deliver Brexit, but then came the revelations of Downing Street parties during the Covid lockdown. When that news leaked, the nation was stunned. An investigation was launched, yet Johnson refused to leave until a sexual misconduct scandal engulfed his own parliamentary conduct. His ministers resigned en masse, and he was gone. Liz Truss entered and lasted forty-nine days — the briefest tenure in British history. Her mini‑budget triggered such economic turmoil and public fury that even the lettuce famously outlasted her. Then came Rishi Sunak. He gambled on a general election and lost, in part because of his bizarre plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda. It is worth noting that Sunak’s photograph appeared more frequently in Hindi newspapers in India than Nehru’s is remembered today — a tragicomic marker of misplaced attention.

After Sunak, the Labour Party won a thumping majority in June 2024. Starmer became prime minister, and in less than two years he has become yet another ex‑prime minister. The British public, battered by rising unemployment, inflation exacerbated by the Iran conflict, and a cost‑of‑living crisis, tired of him. His approval rating collapsed. The party rebelled. He had no option but to resign.

The Machinery That Forces Accountability

Why do prime ministers fall so frequently in Britain? The answer is not always ideological collapse. It is the relentlessness of democratic institutions. A British prime minister has to face press conferences. That may sound obvious, but reflect on the fact that India’s prime minister has not held a single press conference since assuming office in 2014. Starmer could not ignore newspapers; he could not hide from cameras. He had to answer questions in real time, and the press, however flawed, kept watch.

Select committees in the House of Commons scrutinise government decisions with forensic energy. Opinion polls constantly gauge the public pulse, and that pulse is not ignored. When a leader’s approval rating crosses into negative territory so deeply that the party’s electoral prospects are threatened, the internal machinery of the party itself begins to act. The British system does not have an anti‑defection law. A Member of Parliament who votes against the whip does not lose their seat or face disqualification; they are suspended at most. This means the government can genuinely fall if enough of its own MPs turn against it — something that happened to Boris Johnson and, later, contributed to Starmer’s undoing.

Additionally, Britain’s opposition forms a shadow cabinet. There is a shadow prime minister and shadow ministers for every portfolio. They are not token figures; they are expected to question, challenge, and present themselves as a government‑in‑waiting. This institutional pressure leaves no room for the arrogance of unchallenged power.

The Farage Factor and the Trap of Appeasement

Amid this chaos, a familiar demon has been swelling — Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party. Born in 2018, Farage’s outfit is now surging. They have captured 1,454 council seats and control 14 local councils. Farage peddles the typical far‑right cocktail: anti‑immigration rhetoric, deep tax cuts, denial of climate change mitigation, and often outright xenophobia. His rallies attract milkshake‑throwing protesters — a sign of public anger, not a healthy reflex. Yet Reform UK’s rise is not merely a story of British bigotry; it is a textbook example of what happens when mainstream parties try to mimic the far right.

Starmer, terrified of Farage’s momentum, abandoned progressive policies and began sounding like a soft echo of nativist talking points. He tightened immigration rhetoric, skirted green pledges, and drifted rightward. The result was that voters could no longer distinguish him from the genuine article — and they flocked to Farage. The same tragic script unfolded in the United States. Kamala Harris, in the 2024 presidential election, began co‑opting Trumpian themes on immigration and energy production, even campaigning with ex‑Republican representatives. Her surrender of progressive ground only emboldened the far right, and she lost. When a centrist leader lets the far right set the agenda, the far right wins — not at the ballot box but in the battle of ideas, which subsequently translates into electoral gains. Britain is now staring at that danger.

A Tale of Two Democracies: The Accountability Gap

To truly understand the chasm, place the two systems side by side.

Dimension	United Kingdom	India (Modi era)
Prime Ministerial Press Conferences	Regular, often weekly. Facing media is non‑negotiable.	None since 2014. The PM avoids all press interactions.
Anti‑Defection Law	Does not exist. MPs can vote against their party without losing their seat.	Strictly enforced. Dissent leads to disqualification. MPs are reduced to mute followers.
Party Whip	Exist, but defying it does not end a parliamentary career. Backbenchers frequently rebel.	Absolute. The whip is an instrument of total control. Even parliamentary committees are neutered by it.
Shadow Cabinet	Formalised institution. Opposition is a mirror government, forcing accountability.	Absent. The opposition is fragmented, often silenced, and cannot mirror the executive meaningfully.
Parliamentary Sessions	In 2025, a single session ran for 150 days.	Often truncated; recent sessions have seen fewer than 7 days of actual sitting, with bills bulldozed without discussion.
Leadership Change Mechanism	Internal party rules, followed by contests and votes. When the leader loses confidence, they are removed — often brutally, but democratically.	Resignations occur only when the party high command decides. They are often cosmetic, aimed at rebranding, not at owning failure.
Media Scrutiny	Aggressive, even absurd: The Economist once compared Liz Truss’s tenure to a lettuce, and the meme became a national conversation. No law punishes satire.	Journalists face UAPA, sedition, and intimidation. Satire is a dangerous occupation. A similar lettuce comparison could land a publication in court or worse.

The British prime minister, despite all the imperfections of that democracy, cannot run from answerability. No one in India’s ruling establishment is forced to even stand still and be questioned. The contrast is not a minor nuance; it is the difference between power that must be earned daily and power that has been taken for granted.

The Indian Silence: Where Resignations Lost Their Meaning

India’s political history has known moments of genuine accountability through resignation. Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned as Railway Minister after a train accident, taking moral responsibility — a standard that remains unmatched. The Kamaraj Plan of the 1960s saw senior Congress leaders voluntarily resign from ministerial posts to reconnect with the grassroots, because it was believed that power had insulated them from the people. V.P. Singh resigned from Rajiv Gandhi’s cabinet on principle, and later, as Prime Minister, he implemented the Mandal Commission report knowing it would cost him the office; the BJP withdrew support, but he accepted the consequence rather than cling to power by abandoning the policy.

Now, look at the present dispensation. Chief ministers have been changed in BJP‑ruled states — Trivendra Singh Rawat, Vijay Rupani, B.S. Yediyurappa, Sarbananda Sonowal — but their resignations were internal musical chairs, not admissions of failure. When the Ram Temple consecration was accompanied by a stampede, no one resigned. When massive paper leaks destroyed the futures of millions of students, no minister stepped down. When the ethanol policy blunder was flagrant, the blame was deflected onto others. The Prime Minister’s office simply does not answer. The whip system has made the MP’s individual voice a relic. It is not that MPs do not think; it is that we will never know what they think, because speaking out invites swift disqualification. The anti‑defection law, originally meant to prevent governments from falling due to horse‑trading, has become a tool to kill intra‑party dissent. The political stability India once achieved through the 1985 anti‑defection law has now given way to a silent, brittle authoritarianism.

A Media That Could Have Held Power — And Chose Not To

British media is far from perfect. Oligarch ownership, tabloid excess, and political bias are rampant. Yet the sheer vigour with which it holds the prime minister’s feet to the fire cannot be dismissed. Recall the Economist’s lettuce — a vegetable used to mock the fleeting prime minister, an idea that went so viral that it became a national barometer. In India, any publication attempting such a critique of the prime minister would face a probe under UAPA, and its existence would hang by a thread. Hindi newspapers would rather print glossy photographs of Rishi Sunak’s Indian origins than ask why their own prime minister remains inaccessible. The timidity is structural, enforced by a hostile regime that labels every challenge as sedition. A free press is not a luxury that Britain alone can afford; it is the oxygen of accountability. In India, that oxygen has been pumped out of the room, and the suffocation is now normal.

What Does This Tell Us About Power?

The British experience is not a fairy tale. It is messy, often farcical, and frustrating. Yet every prime minister who fell was forced out by a combination of public anger, party ethics, institutional checks, and a media that could not be silenced. Starmer’s departure is not a failure of democracy; it is democracy’s brutal, corrective pulse. In India, the machinery of accountability has been so thoroughly dismantled that the notion of a leader facing consequences for failure seems almost quaint. The whip, the absent press conference, the defanged opposition, the tamed media — these are not accidents. They are pillars of a system that has made power immune to the people.

If democracy is to mean anything, it must retain the ability to throw out those who fail. Britain’s revolving door may be dizzying, but it is a door that still turns. In India, we have replaced the door with a fortress wall. That is not stability. It is stagnation in the guise of strength.

Criticisms

• - Press conferences have not been held by the Prime Minister since 2014, denying the public direct accountability.
• - The anti-defection law has been weaponized to silence all internal dissent within parties, reducing MPs to obedient numbers.
• - Parliamentary sessions have been drastically shortened, with bills passed without adequate debate or scrutiny.
• - The appointment and removal of chief ministers are dictated by the party high command, not by democratic failings or popular mandate.
• - Media organisations have been intimidated through laws like UAPA, and journalistic independence has been severely curtailed.
• - No resignation on moral grounds has been tendered for major governance failures, including paper leaks and stampedes.
• - The centralisation of power in the Prime Minister’s Office has eroded the collective functioning of the cabinet.
• - A culture of silence has been enforced within the ruling party, where even elected representatives fear expressing dissent.
• - The rise of far-right discourse globally has been met with appeasement rather than principled opposition, both in Britain and the United States, a pattern that only strengthens extremism.
• - Public trust in democratic institutions has been systematically eroded by the refusal to answer legitimate questions.